I’ve started playing Netrunner again. This time, rather than the CCG that I played with Kurt back in our ancient college days, it’s Android: Netrunner, made by Fantasy Flight Games (who I freakin’ love), and it’s a living card game. Which in essence means that it’s a lot cheaper, and easier to keep up. As per usual, I’ve jumped in with both feet and an arm.
And that leads me to the first part of this discussion: Competition.
A couple spoilery discussions for Walking Dead Season 2, Episode 1.
I find myself wanting to come to CootB, but just having random things to write about seems unlikely to produce the relevant mental discipline.
So! A series! Weekly (where Weekly exists in the universe that the Podcasts come out monthly)! Fun!
This is going to cover a range of things, with a single theme: What I’m Playing (hence the title). Whether that be board game, PC game, console game, MMO, iOS app, whatever, it’s going in here. Which makes sense for me, because I veer wildly between what I’m doing, often in a single night. It’s part reviews, part discussion, part musings on whatever I want. Which is what really drives readers!
So!
Warning #1: Tons of Frozen spoilers, if that’s a problem.
Warning #2: This is, I’ll admit, basically Frozen fanfic.
I really really liked Frozen. Â And to me, at its heart, Frozen was an origin story for an Ice Queen. Â That’s why “Let It Go” is a fantastic song. Â It’s why I loved Elsa creating the giant snow golem – she didn’t *want* to, but she *had* to – that’s the hallmark of a great villain’s back story. Â They didn’t *set out* to be evil and vicious. Â Events just progressed in such a way that, while in retrospect things might have gone differently, each step at the time seemed like the reasonable, necessary thing to do.
And Elsa is perfect. Â She has a strange gift through no fault of her own. Â She tries to control it, and can’t, so tries more desperate measures. Â And then the goddamn world interferes, and now, this is happening.
So here’s what I wanted to happen: The final scene. Â Elsa has accidentally cursed the one person she ever cared about to death. Â Anna is DYING. Â She’s frozen. Â People are trying to save her, and Elsa herself is trying to stop them, willingly or no.
And then, in the movie, good wins, Anna is saved, Elsa loves her sister, yay!
But I want a version where Anna stays frozen. Â I want Elsa to watch her sister freeze, watch everyone try to stop it, and watch it fail. Â And then know that the only person she’s loved, and who loves her, has just died because of her actions.
I’m returning from a long hiatus, to post this vastly important message.
I am extremely excited about Destiny, the upcoming persistent world shooter from Bungie. It’s a post-apocalyptic, dudes in future-tech with guns fighting aliens movie. The classes are things like “Warlock” and “Titan” and “Hunter.” That’s about what I need in a game. So I’ve been following it since the E3 reveal, and I’m excited. Except for one thing.
/dance.
So, I took a look at Green Ronin’s Song of Fire and Ice Roleplaying Game. I’m actually pretty interested. It’s actually fairly unique (at least among the systems I know) in mechanics. It’s sort of like a lot of things, but doesn’t match any of them.
It’s mainly based on attributes, which is fairly true to the books. Â Your attributes define the number of dice you can roll – 2 is base, 7 is, I think, max. Â When you’re testing, you roll a number of d6 equal to your attribute, and sum them, to try to beat a target number. The interesting bit is the bonus dice piece – skills and training are represented by bonus dice (which can’t exceed your attribute dice). Â But bonus dice are extra – you roll more dice, but still only choose a number of dice equal to your attribute. Â So you get *better* results with bonus dice, but it’s never above what someone can achieve naturally with some luck.
I thought it might be nice for us to have a place for Basement dwellers to mention stuff they’re kickstarting, or stuff they think others might be interested in Kickstarting. I figure the comments make a reasonable facsimile of a thread….
But SERIOUSLY.
I created an XBL account for my daughter, so that she can play Minecraft in an online game.
I get an email to her address saying that we have to verify the account (perfectly fine) by an adult.
Click it, and get taken to MSN (MSN? That’s your interface? Really?). Where it has two options – “Get your parent” or “ask by email.” Note that I’ll later find out that the “Ask by email” link doesn’t even work – it goes to a dead page.
Choosing ask a parent gives a confirm or deny link. I click confirm, and it asks me to sign in my account (fine, no worries).
Then I sign in, and it says it wants to verify me as an adult. And to do that, I see this:
“To verify that you’re an adult, you must provide a valid credit card number. A credit card is the only method of age verification we accept.
We’ll charge your credit card $0.50 (50 cents) and a portion will be donated to charity.”
Honestly, I almost don’t want to mention this, given that we’re trying to add a board game section to our podcast, and Dice Tower is the king of board game podcasts, but here goes…
They have an awards event every year. It’s a bit under promoted for no apparent reason, so here’s a small attempt to correct that…
http://www.dicetowernews.com/dice-tower-awards-for-2011/
Check them out, listen to all 250+ episodes, then subscribe! Â Then come back here once we get our podcast rolling with board games…
Note that this list has completely become my “must buy” list. Some really good stuff on there.
The full list, if you’re lazy, is here
Over the past 4 years, I’ve gone from a board game fan to a true believer. Â Perhaps even a Hobbyist, gods forbid. Â Indulge me in a bit of history, before the real meat of the post….